By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan Common Dreams (8/20/20) During the official roll call at the virtual Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, representatives from 57 states and territories declared their delegate totals for Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, each from an iconic setting highlighting their region. Native American delegates from the Dakotas and New Mexico greeted viewers in their indigenous languages. African American delegates spoke from Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The sweeping celebration of the Democratic Party’s diversity, however, also highlighted the party’s fracture between its centrist establishment and its emerging…

The Center For Public Integrity (8/22/20) Hi Watchdogs, and welcome back to your favorite newsletter. This week, we have another scoop on White House Coronavirus Task Force leader Dr. Deborah Birx’s  latest call with state and local leaders about the state of the pandemic, the reason why workplace deaths are on the rise and pilots fighting robots. Let’s get into it. What the White House doesn’t want you to know: The state of the pandemic. Every week, the White House Coronavirus Task Force issues weekly reports to governors about the current state of the pandemic but keeps these reports out of…

By Susan Lampert Smith Up North News (8/18/20) Jackie Gennett says the coronavirus pandemic didn’t kill her Bushel & Peck’s specialty food business, but the Trump administration’s throttling of the U.S. Postal Service just might. As her Beloit restaurant all but shut down during the pandemic, her specialty food mail-order business ramped up and she began shipping chive vinegar and dilly beans all over the country. She bought special boxes to be compliant with the USPS, her most affordable option for shipping. “Our online sales grew by 250 percent, a massive number in such a short time,’’ she said. But…

My response to the Chris Hedges article: America’s Homemade Bipartisan Failure & The Hellish Consequences To Come. Hedges write: “Banks are stockpiling reserves of cash to cope with the expected wave of bankruptcies and defaults on mortgages, student loans, car loans, personal loans and credit card debt. The ruleless-ness and anomie that defines the lives of tens of millions of Americans was orchestrated by the two ruling parties in the service of a corporate oligarchy. If we do not address this anomie, if we do not restore the social bonds shattered by predatory corporate capitalism, the decay will accelerate.” Question: Does…

Regardless of the outcome, the election will not stop the rise of hypernationalism, crisis cults and other signs of an empire’s terminal decline. By Chris Hedges Scheerpost (8/10/20) The terminal decline of the United States will not be solved by elections. The political rot and depravity will continue to eat away at the soul of the nation, spawning what anthropologists call crisis cults — movements led by demagogues that prey on an unbearable psychological and financial distress. These crisis cults, already well established among followers of the Christian Right and Donald Trump, peddle magical thinking and an infantilism that promises…

“Short term, I think it’s fair to say we really have not distinguished ourselves in a positive way by how we responded to the crisis when it was upon us. And the proof of the pudding of that is simply that we have five percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s deaths due to covid-19. And there’s no way to spin that in a positive light.” — Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) (8/14/20) ***** “Mr. President, after three and a half years, do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?” — S.V….

The bottom line is, Biden is by no means a shoo-in. By Benjamin Dixon The Guardian (8/10/20) If the 2020 election was left up to white Americans, Donald Trump would be given a second term. According to the recent Hill-HarrisX poll, 50% of white voters would vote for Trump if the election were held today. So once again, it is up to Black voters to save America from itself. But when one considers how drastically the Democratic party needs the Black vote to perform for their candidate to win – according to some estimates, they need turnout rate of 65% of all…

By Josh Campbell CNN (8/16/20) (CNN) — As the body counts rise, American cities remain ground zero for a deadly new reality. And those charged with keeping communities safe and helping flatten the curve of death are under fire and losing confidence from those they are sworn to protect. This isn’t coronavirus but a plague of violence in many American cities as murders and assaults spike during the global pandemic. From May to June 2020, homicides in 20 major US cities increased by 37%, led by Chicago, Philadelphia and Milwaukee, according to new data from the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) think…

Step up to save OUR Postal Service emailing each person below saying you are a citizen who relies on postal service for bill paying and medication. Please ask each one below to stop the dismantling of OUR Postal service and say history will judge them.  Please help inundate them and try to prevent the dismantling of OUR postal service. This is critical. Thanks. The following is a list of six men who have the power to fire Trump-appointee Louis DeJoy. They are the USPS Board of Governors.  They have the power to rollback Trump’s hobbling of the USPS.  They have the power to…

  A raging virus of executive suite greed. By Jim Hightower Other Words (7/29/20) The holy mantra of health professionals was coined about 2,500 years ago by the Greek physician Hippocrates: “Do no harm.” Of course, that was before corporate healthcare took charge and asserted a new guiding ethic: “Jack up profits.” Putting this in practice, America’s largest and richest hospital chains rushed to the front of the COVID-19 bailout line this spring to pull $15 billion from the government’s emergency fund. They pocketed the taxpayers’ money despite sitting on tens of billions of dollars of their own cash reserves. But hold…